Episode 405: Busy Is Not Profitable: The Path to High-Value Dentistry with Lisa Grogan

Lester De Alwis: Welcome to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast. I’m your host, Lester De Alwis, and this show is dedicated to helping dental professionals build stronger, more profitable practices with less reliance on insurance. Today I am excited to welcome Lisa Grogan, dental business and leadership consultant. Lisa spent years in dental sales, including leading Invisalign distribution across Ireland, before becoming an international speaker and coach. She created the Platinum Practice Approach and the LENS Method frameworks that help clinics attract higher value patients and convert more cosmetic and premium treatment cases. Today’s episode is called This Is Not Profitable: The Path to High Value Dentistry. Lisa, welcome to the show.

Lisa Grogan: So great to be here.

Lisa Grogan: When we got a scanner initially in clinic, we just weren’t using it consistently. There wasn’t the flow, it was taking too long. So we were picking and choosing when to use it. I’m sure it was costing us money more than anything else. So we decided, we need to change the workflow here. Literally everybody has to be doing the same thing. And the reactions we got off patients just blew us away, especially before and afters. For patients to see the outcome before they’ve even started treatment is a game changer. I have seen clinicians taking 30 or 40 minutes to scan down to 5 or 7 minutes. But there’s only one way through it, and that is practice, practice, practice. When you see your conversion rates going up, which they absolutely will, that’s the payoff.

Lisa Grogan: Back in 2022, the average running cost of a surgery was roughly 450 euro a day. Now it’s on average about 800 a day just to run a clinic surgery, which means earning 100 euro an hour really to cover that. If you’re stuck doing low value work every day where you’re coming out with maybe 160 euro an hour, the balance of that is let’s say 60 euro. And then if you have a white gap in your diary, that’s eating into that little extra you’ve made. A lot of practices run on a vibe business. The book is busy, we think we’re doing well, but when they look at the figures, it can be quite shocking. Once we get the awareness, then we can do something about it.

Lisa Grogan: Your book doesn’t need to be full of the complex stuff all day. There has to be that balance, but it’s a mix of more cosmetic work coming in, even crowns, veneers, there’s more to be earned per hour. If you do a clear aligner case, on average three to four hours, a dentist can earn about 500 to 600 euro an hour for that. That additional income will protect the low value times.

Lisa Grogan: I would recommend dentists use something like a Smile Assessment Form, which is a gorgeous free resource. It’s so easy. We introduced it into the clinic, it was an absolute game changer, helped our reputation, helped our relationships with our patients, and earned us such a big revenue. It’s a simple form that just says, for the patient, I don’t like the color of my teeth, I find my teeth difficult to clean. And dentists will look at that and think, oh, Mary, you’ve been coming to us for years, you never told me. We do a thing called clear aligners, would you like to have a conversation about that? If I open a clinic tomorrow, that form would be given to every patient, new and old.

Lisa Grogan: With my ABC, the A is for attract. It’s your online messaging, it’s your visuals, it’s how you’re attracting the work you want to do more of. The C is for conversion. Once a patient likes what they see online, they’ll ring the clinic, if they like who they’re speaking to, they’ll come visit, if they like what they’ve heard, they’ll convert into treatment. The sad truth is patients are not as loyal as they used to be. The B is a little bit about my secret sauce, I’m a mindset and neuroscience coach as well, and B stands for belief. If you don’t believe you’re doing the right thing, or imposter syndrome kicks in, or you feel salesy, those thoughts creep in while a patient is sitting in the chair, and you won’t have the conversations, or they won’t flow well.

Lester De Alwis: I want to take this time to give a shout out to Ekwa Marketing, who is the marketing sponsor for this episode. If you want to check how you’re doing with your online visibility and how your marketing is bringing in the kind of cases we’ve been talking about, the team at Ekwa Marketing is offering a complimentary practice growth audit at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm. You can get a roadmap on where you are and where you want to go from where your marketing is right now, or book a complimentary coaching strategy meeting with Gary at lessinsurancedependence.com/csm.

Lisa Grogan: The LENS method is a four D approach. The L is logical, we’ll tell the patient what they need, go through pricing, get them booked in. Patients decide to go ahead emotionally, logically second, emotionally first. The E is emotional, the energy the team brings. I would walk into a clinic and could tell within seconds if it was a happy place to work. The N is neurological, our belief systems. I talked to a dentist whose nurse was out sick constantly, and when the owner told her she was valued and missed when not there, that gave her a whole new sense of, my goodness, I am a cog in the wheel, and absences stopped. The S is social, that massive level of accountability within the team, has the lab work come back, who’s tracking finances, who needs to call back that patient.

Lisa Grogan: I read an article recently that 60% of patients interviewed wanted cosmetic work. If you’re a dentist watching this, is 60% of your day patients asking about cosmetic work? I bet you not. Patients don’t know what they don’t know, so they’re not going to ask you about treatments. You need to be brave and find ways to open up these conversations. A philosophy we had in the clinic was friendliness over professionalism. When a patient is sitting in your chair, view that patient as a friend. We would have no problem saying, have you ever thought of straightening your teeth, to a friend or a sister. But that fear of being salesy holds dentists back. You’re not in the sales business, you’re in the solutions business.

Lisa Grogan: The easiest way is my website, lisagrogandentalcoach.com. My Instagram is Lisa Grogan Dental Coach. Something I’d recommend is go to the website, and the little popup will come up for a scorecard, it takes two or three minutes and goes through the ABC method, so you can really see where the blind spots and breakdowns are happening. The feedback from dentists has just been fantastic. If you don’t know where to start on this journey, this is going to give you a good place to start.

Lester De Alwis: Lisa, thank you so much for spending your time with us today.

Lisa Grogan: Been great. Really enjoyed it.